Edward S. Herman
The
left always has a problem at election time, and embattled left pens are already
trying to demonstrate that we should: (1) forego voting; (2) vote for Ralph
Nader; or (3) vote for the lesser evil (Gore). The fact that there is always
such vigorous dispute on this subject, with people of solid left credentials
coming to sharply different conclusions, results in part from the extremely
marginal position of the left. Its members never have the option of voting for
candidates who support left positions and who also have any serious chance of
attaining high office. Leftists are always in the position of having to
participate, if at all, as outsiders.
This
produces one strand of argument as regards voting that says that if the system
will not allow anybody who represents our basic values and policy positions to
make a serious electoral bid for power, we should reject the entire enterprise
by refusing to participate. This position rests on the belief that our views can
not be heard and the positions we favor can not be debated because of a stacked
deck–stacked by the overwhelming importance of corporate money in elections,
plus the huge bias of the corporate and advertiser-funded media. To vote is to
give some kind of approval to this process, suggesting that this is really
democracy in action and that change can be effected through electoral
participation. This also distracts people from thinking about organizing and
acting to do something that would really facilitate change.
This
case for non-participation is stronger when the "lesser evil"
represents a genuine evil. For example, consider that the Clinton-Gore team has
been the leader in imposing "sanctions of mass destruction" in Iraq
that have killed over a million Iraqis, with monthly ongoing totals during the
electoral campaign of an estimated 4,000 or more children under five years of
age. This team is also guilty of other serious crimes, in Colombia, Serbia,
Kosovo, East Timor, and elsewhere. At home, its support of the 1996 Personal
Responsibility act, ending the U.S. committment to assist poor people, and its
crime and terrorism legislation, have been serious betrayals of principle and
elementary decency and attacks on human rights and civil liberties. Gore has
supported all these actions and policies and hasn’t distanced himself from them
even for electoral purposes. A vote for this "lesser evil" is
therefore a vote that implicitly approves seriously regressive policies at home,
a growing military budget, an aggressive and murderous foreign policy, and the
commission of literal war crimes abroad.
So,
in addition to refusing to participate because the deck is stacked and
progressive change through electoral politics is therefore ruled out in advance
by the structural facts of "golden rule," we may also refuse to vote
for people whose performance no leftist can accept and approve. A vote is a form
of approval of the candidate as well as the process–nonvoting is a way of
expressing disapproval of both, and as more and more people do refuse to vote
the system as well as the candidates lose credibility. I suspect that if the
voting option "none of the above" was made available, many people who
pull the lever for candidates while holding their noses, would instead vote that
the existing plutocratic electoral democracy is failing to provide vote-worthy
candidates.
Enter
Ralph Nader. He is making a presidential run on the Green Party ticket that is
more serious than the one he attempted in 1996. He is trying to raise money and
he plans to campaign aggressively and participate in debates with the other
candidates whenever possible. He will talk about a string of issues off the
two-party agenda, centering in excessive corporate power and the means of
controlling it, and including corporate welfare, environmental abuses, the
bloated military budget and shriveled public sector, free trade, and the
militarization of foreign policy. Voting for Nader represents a form of refusal
and rejection of the "practical" options.
Katha
Pollitt, who voted for Nader in 1996, assails his candidacy this year
("Progressive Presidential Politics," Nation, April 17, 2000), even
though he is making a more serious effort to get his message across and win
votes. She contends that third parties can’t win in the United States–the
playing field is too unlevel–so that such efforts are futile and a waste of
energy. But her second line of argument is that the differences between the
major political parties are real and that those differences can mean a lot to
affected groups. She mentions that blacks vote very heavily for the Democrats
and apparently see the Republicans as a menace to their welfare. Those deeply
concerned over choice and the fate of Roe versus Wade see a significant
difference in the major parties. The Republicans’ push for school privatization
and vouchers makes them also a more serious threat to school teachers and public
schools, so that teachers and many others see concrete gains and losses from
available electoral options. Pollitt doesn’t mention the Supreme Court, but for
many the threat of the Republicans putting in another Scalia or Thomas is
frightening–for some this overrides the evil of the lesser evil and all other
considerations and causes them to opt for Gore.
These
points are not easily dismissed and it is not possible to scoff at their being
decisive considerations for many. However, a few counter considerations deserve
attention. One thing Pollitt and others neglect is the educational function of
alternative parties even as they lose. Nader will be calling continuous
attention to issues that Gore-Bush would like to avoid, and he will be assailing
the dominance of money in limiting our effective choices. Without such a
candidacy who would raise such issues? And even if he loses, many will be aware
that he is losing not because of his lack of presidential merit but because of
the unlevel playing field that he will be attacking. This will mitigate the
potentially demoralizing effect of his modest vote.
On
the differences between the Democrats and Republicans and the net value of the
Democrats winning, several cautions are in order. First, on some issues the
Clinton administration has been worse than the Republicans, as in the crime and
terrorism legislation, and possibly even in its aggressive, militaristic and
cruel foreign policy. In its priority push of the corporate agenda supporting
free trade and unconstrained corporate globalization, a balanced budget, and
welfare "reform," while protecting the military budget, the
Clintonites have actually led the country in the direction desired by the
corporate community and "moderate" Republicans. With a Democratic
president, the Democratic Party supported policies that it would have opposed or
moderated if offered by a Republican president. The Democrats and many
progressives are lulled into complaisance or are paralyzed when their leader is
in office, mouthing liberal slogans even as he subverts liberalism.
The
priority efforts pursued by Clinton and supported by his party feed back to
damage folks like teachers and blacks who see concrete advantages in supporting
Democrats. Without anybody seriously contesting these central policies the
corporate agenda will continue to dominate and benefits to those outside this
small clique of beneficiaries will tend to shrink. It can be argued that third
parties are needed as a protection against the Democrats doing this–either by
forcing the Democrats back to populist service or by directly providing the
democratic alternative that the Democrats have abandoned.
Pollitt
and others also downplay a long-term versus short-term perspective. Arguably the
immediate differences between the lesser and greater evil must be weighed
against the secular overall move to the right helped along by voting for
short-term interests in each election. Because the Democrats can count on many
people voting for them for narrow concrete gains and marginal differences- -many
approaching the nominal only–they can focus on attracting a more conservative
constituency (and accommodating their corporate funders) by gradually abandoning
populist policies and service to their mass constituency, as Clinton has done.
This strategy has not been a winner for the Democrats, as it has contributed to
shifts from majority to minority positions in the U.S. senate, house, and in
state governorships in the Clinton years, as well as a weakened presidency.
Thus,
the concrete gains of the short run may be illusory if the entire dynamic of the
Democratic Party’s shifting to the right wipes out benefits and entitlements and
then reinstates some fraction of those undermined, which the Republicans would
leave wiped out. If this is the case, the short-run calculus of those supporting
the Democrats for such concrete gains may thus be helping undermine non-elite
benefits in the long run.
The
counter-argument to the above is that the long-run is a series of short-runs, so
that third parties and non-voting that gives the more evil party control will
push the political spectrum to the right even faster and impose heavy costs on a
large number of victims afforded at least minimal protection by Democratic rule.
The concrete small gains are a bird in the hand; the possible long- run gains
are speculative and far from assured. It is not clear that if the Democrats
halted their march to the right that that march, which is based in part on
structural changes damaging to real democracy that feed into the political
process, would not actually accelerate.
On
the other hand, Republican control and policies might polarize enough to clarify
issues for many people and force changes in the party alignments–making a third
party viable if not impelling changes in the Democratic party. Admittedly this
could be dangerous and risky, and I do not claim to have definitive answers to
these difficult questions. There are many unknowns in this pretty bleak picture.
I myself am planning to help and vote for Ralph Nader, based on the weights I
give the considerations discussed above. But I am not about to attack others
like Pollitt who have a different view and different weighting of the variables
and values at stake.